It’s no secret that the spotlight is shining bright on Southeast Asia as the next major player in the global economy. In many ways, Thailand stands out above its peers—particularly in the retail and eCommerce sectors. With a consumption economy that is primed to quadruple within this decade, it is little wonder that businesses are revving up their plans to make headway in Thailand.

To appeal to the tech-savviness and heightened demands of younger Thai customers, businesses are moving beyond standard text-based digital communications to include rich communication services (RCS) features, such as high-resolution images, animated GIFs, videos, and more.

And these businesses aren’t just hopping onto a trend to play with the latest social interaction toy. They are driving real results. With an RCS adoption rate that ranks tenth in the world and second in Southeast Asia, branching out into RCS means Thai businesses are reaping results by striking while the iron is hot.

Lazada doubles loyalty and sales via Facebook Messenger

Lazada Thailand is one of the leading eCommerce companies within Southeast Asia. Despite their frontrunner status, Lazada Thailand has not stagnated; instead it has made significant headway by building a social eCommerce loyalty programme around Facebook Messenger.

They achieved this through the simple act of integrating the Facebook Messenger channel to their platform, which allowed users to open up conversations with fellow shoppers, vendors, and Lazada’s customer service agents without downloading any additional apps.

The integration of Facebook Messenger also made it easier for Lazada to collect data on which products customers had saved, shared, and purchased. This eventually helped the platform provide personalised customer service and targeted ads that were tailored towards their likes and dislikes. The result of adding this additional social channel led to the following results:

Conversation commerce is driving sales

Lazada isn’t the only one benefiting from Facebook Messenger. As many as 78% of Thai customers are connecting with a business account via the channel every week. And the volume of daily conversations between people and business is growing by 50% year-on-year.

A customer behavioural survey conducted by Meta also revealed that more than three in four Thai customers favor messaging over email or phone. In addition, more than four in five customers feel closer to brands that they can message directly.

The sheer volume of Thai customers who are open to the channel means that both small and large brands can stand to benefit from including Facebook Messenger in their customer communications.

Thai apparel brand Era-won, is another example of a business who managed to handle larger orders and enquiry volumes that came along with their expansion by automating customer notifications on Facebook Messenger and sending targeted ads that generated an 8x return on spending.

Thai businesses grow sustainably by being omnipresent

We know what you’re thinking: “That sounds great, but how can I possibly add another communication channel when my agent can’t even cope with the existing channels?”

More channels certainly means more complexity. But with Thai customers zipping through life on the fast track, omnichannel communications is a must-have. Businesses that attempt to cut corners by adopting chat bots and other forms of automation are missing out on one key customer engagement ingredient: personalised attention.

This is important because more and more Thai customers are citing good customer service as a top factor for their purchasing decisions, which means there’s never been a more important time to simplify your customer service stream.

"With next-gen omni retail built on digital infrastructure, we can fully connect customers and department stores to create further opportunities for sustainable business growth.” – Adisai Thammaromdee, Head of Omnichannel & Digital Marketing, Central Department Store Co. Ltd. and Robinson Plc.

While Facebook Messenger can bring businesses positive results, there’s no denying that handling conversations across several chat apps simultaneously is a challenge. But Thai customers are toggling between channels from their phone, which means that businesses can only keep up by following suit.

8x8 Converse powers omnichannel communications

Thankfully, omnichannel communications can be achieved with the right tools. Communication platforms, such as 8x8 Converse, make it easy for businesses to add and remove popular chat app channels, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, Zalo, Viber, and KakaoTalk, as business needs evolve. While nearly 80% of people in Thailand use Facebook Messenger to communicate, as many as 360,000 Thai customers also frequent WhatsApp for daily conversations.

Being everywhere all at once accomplishes little if there is no common touchpoint to unify all your channels. The worst-case situation is that your agents become overwhelmed by constant streams of communication coming in from various channels. At the end of the day, it is the customers, and then the bottom line, who suffer.

Burnout and confusion can be avoided if agents have a platform that allows them to pick up conversations where they are left off, even if customers pop in from different channels. Without a unified platform, agents will be scrambling, which leaves communication prone to error.

Not only does 8x8 Converse allow businesses to communicate with customers on their preferred chat platform, it’s designed in a way that makes it possible for businesses to build closer relationships with their customers immediately (no coding/integrations required).

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On 8x8 Converse, all chat app conversations are visible at a glance from a single view and the full chat history can be reviewed before responding to customers. It also allows agents to be assigned, queues to be monitored, profiles to be personalised and response times to be analysed. The best part? If your company already uses popular CRM platforms such as Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Salesforce, 8x8 Converse can easily be integrated into them while costing your business zero down time.

Like what you’ve read so far? Check out 8x8 Converse to take your digital communications strategy and customer service to the next level.